At the end of May, the European Commission issued a Commission Staff Working Document (SWD) on an Integrated Approach to Fragility. This much-awaited policy, which came some weeks after the Council adopted Conclusions on Fragility and Development, is a welcome signal that the EU’s attention for fragile and conflict affected states remains strong. What concrete new commitments does the European Commission make towards fragile states and the people living in these contexts?  Can this Integrated Approach to Fragility stand the test of negotiations on the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF)?

A welcome signal that the EU will address fragility

The EU’s Integrated Approach to Fragility comes at a critical moment as fragility and conflict are on the rise globally. Although many argued that this initiative deserved a more authoritative status than a Staff Working Document, it nonetheless represents a highly welcome policy commitment to addressing this alarming global trend¹. This is particularly important because many other geopolitical actors continue to overlook or deprioritise the growing challenge of fragility. Equally significant is the timing of the policy: it arrives when fragility risks being sidelined even within Brussels. Indeed, various EU institutional stakeholders, from Member States to the European Parliament, tend to increasingly focus their attention on competitiveness, defence and geopolitical gains in the EU’s global role.  

Yet both the Commission’s Integrated Approach to Fragility and  the Council Conclusions on Fragility and Development are clear: fragility is on the rise, and the EU needs to address it. Not only from the imperative to uphold EU principles and values, but because, in this interconnected world, fragility has regional and global repercussions.

Unlike the Council Conclusions, the Commission’s Integrated Approach takes on one important challenge: developing EU principles to engage in politically estranged contexts which face fragility. Indeed, only by reflecting on the specific challenges of these situations can the EU develop an Integrated Approach to Fragility that can credibly be rolled out.

One area in which the Council Conclusions are particularly convincing is their recognition that the Global Gateway Strategy requires a differentiated approach in fragile contexts.  Member States seem to acknowledge better the limitations of attracting private investments to fragile contexts, and the need for the Global Gateway to therefore ”complement the other more tailored and flexible EU tools”. As noted by the authors of the CSDN Discussion Paper on The EU’s approach to fragility and its conflict drivers, “the Global Gateway’s orientation towards funding large-scale strategic infrastructure projects and empowering the private sector may not be automatically feasible” in these contexts.

Very positively, both the Council and the Commission renew their commitment towards conflict sensitivity. This is particularly important given that this requirement receded to a narrower scope of EU-funded actions in the Commission’s July 2025 proposal for a new Global Europe regulation (the post-2027 EU budget for external action)². Both the Council and the Commission also refer to civil society as a partner to cooperate with and empower, with strong support pledged especially by the Commission. 

The EU’s new commitments for fragile states 

Admittedly, much of the Integrated Approach is about consolidating the existing EU tools to address fragility. Nevertheless, the Commission makes some new commitments, focused mainly on extremely fragile states as per the OECD’s typology ( with fewer new commitments for highly fragile states)³. These commitments include:

• Enhancing the EU’s ability to analyse extremely fragile contexts and design appropriate interventions
• Promoting internal coordination amongst EU services, EU delegations, and EU Member States
• Seeking opportunities for collaboration on joint funding (across EU and Member States initiatives) in these contexts
• Sharing expertise with the private sector to attract investments in these contexts
• Exchanging with stakeholders and partners (including civil society)
• Prioritising strategic communications

While these commitments are not radical overhauls, they constitute a concrete effort to tackle extreme fragility, at a time when such initiatives are rare on the global stage.  

For EPLO, the main question remains: shouldn’t the EU implement all of these measures also in highly fragile states? If not, given that highly fragile states include Mali, Niger and Lebanon, wouldn’t the EU miss opportunities to tackle conflict-drivers of fragility before partner countries lapse into extreme fragility? Perhaps more strategically, the Council Conclusions do not draw a line in the EU’s toolbox between highly and extremely fragile states. 

Will the Integrated Approach to Fragility stand the test of MFF negotiations?

One of the reasons why this Integrated Approach is so timely, and the elephant in the room of this Staff Working Document, is the next Multiannual Financial Framework, the EU’s next long-term budget (2028-2034). 

The Integrated Approach does not mention the MFF, nor does it promote more EU funding for fragile contexts. By contrast, the Council refers to the “importance of ensuring that EU ODA is adequately and transparently directed towards fragile and conflict affected contexts, where needs are greatest”.

Whether this commitment will translate into the ongoing MFF negotiations remains an open question. As the negotiations enter a critical phase this autumn, with the Council expected to adopt its position on the financial figures in October, Member States’ willingness to allocate resources to external action will ultimately determine whether the EU can meaningfully step up its response to fragility. 

As regards the proposed Global Europe regulation, it offers few guarantees on EU funds to tackle the conflict-drivers of fragility. The proposed sectoral regulation for external action funding  has for instance removed the ring-fencing of thematic programming for peacebuilding and conflict prevention, and it has put crisis response in direct competition with the new competitiveness priority of the instrument. It vows to develop a differentiated approach for extremely fragile states, but leaves out highly fragile states. 

To credibly deliver on the new EU integrated approach, both Member States and the European Commission need to now link policy commitments with budget allocations.

Read the CSDN Discussion Paper: The EU’s approach to fragility and its conflict drivers (March 2026)

¹The Staff Working Document was subsumed under the Joint Communication on the EU’s humanitarian action in a shifting global order
²See EPLO Statement and Brief on Global Europe
³See the OECD’s 2025 States of Fragility report